In making announcement Francis further distances himself from predecessor

Pope Francis further distanced himself from fundamentalist Christians when he declared that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang were real and compatible with the Catholic faith.

The pope made his remarks to members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on Oct. 27, Catholic News Service reported.

"When we read the account of creation in Genesis, we risk thinking that God was a magician, complete with a magic wand, able to do everything. But it is not like that," he said.

But Francis also seemed to distance himself from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI and the former pope's supporters, who voiced support for the theory of intelligent design. In 2005, Cardinal Christoph Schonborn of Vienna, a key Benedict ally, wrote in a New York Times op-ed that "evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process is not".

Francis said in his remarks to the academy that the Big Bang did not preclude the existence of God, "on the contrary, it required it."

The pope was not setting any new ground theologically, as Religion News Service noted in its report: In 1950, Pope Pius XII proclaimed there was no opposition between evolution and Catholic doctrine. In 1996, St. John Paul II endorsed Pius' statement.

In recent history, evangelical Christian groups have voiced the strongest opposition to scientific theories that contradict a more literal interpretation of the Bible, while the Catholic Church has been more open to scientific discoveries.

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